It seems Ladbrokes can't stay out of the news at the moment. Last week for all the right reasons, this week, under less celebrated circumstances.
A story has emerged in the UK's Mail on Sunday, that a Sri Lankan born, Melbourne (Australia) based IT consultant is shopping around a database of Ladbrokes players' information.
According to the Mail, they received a call from a man named 'Daniel' who claimed to be a representative of Melbourne based company DSS Enterprises. He provided the Mail with player details including gambling history, customer account numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers and email addresses of 10,000 Ladbrokes registered players, and offered access to full the database of 4.5 million players - for a price of course.
DSS Enterprises is owned by Dinitha Subasinghe who provided IT services to Ladbrokes during 2007 and 2008 and who has not surprisingly denied any knowledge of, or involvement in the theft of player records from Ladbrokes.
'Unless my name, my signature, my fingerprint is on anything, it has nothing to do with me...I had a call from a senior person at Ladbrokes this morning. I did not take the call. I don't know what they are ringing me about,' he told Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper.
Ladbrokes for their part have swung into damage control mode, contacting all customers to assure them that no credit card details were included in the data stolen.
A company PR spokesperson told the Mail, 'This is a criminal act and we are working with the police, the ICO and the newspaper to identify and apprehend the culprit.'
This isn't the first player records theft/trade scandal that has occurred (back in October claims were made that player details from a number of well known operators had been stolen and were up for sale) and it certainly won't be the last. But it's magnitude is significant. The gambling history of 4.5 million players, with no doubt some high net worth individuals/celebrities amongst them, will rock some boats I'm sure.
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